LATEST DEVELOPMENTS AT THE S-DALINAC*

Presently, at the S-DALINAC several developments are in progress to improve on its beam quality as well as on its general reliability. A concept for a new modern uniform control system is presented. It will be either a commercial system with industrial standards or a corresponding proprietary development to replace the existing over years grown system and to simplify, fasten and standardise maintenance and beam operation. Also a concept for a new rf control system for the superconducting accelerating structures is discussed. To improve the energy spread of the electron beam from presently 50 keV (FWHM) by a factor of 3-5, a hybrid system (fast analogue feedback system and DSP based unit) is under development. To study injector beam dynamics, a new fast computer code (V-Code, which was first used successfully at the DESY TTF) was implemented. A new experimental setup was installed at the S-DALINAC to generate a narrowly collimated, low background bremsstrahlung beam with end point energies up to 130 MeV for an experiment which uses Compton scattering off the nucleon to measure its polarizability. Finally, results from a first attempt to increase the unloaded Q value of niobium cavities by moderate “in situ ” heating are presented.